


Ming-Hua Appreciation Week Drabbles

by RhazadeWaterbender



Series: Red Lotus Appreciation Weeks 2015 [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Ableism, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Ming-Hua Appreciation Week, Red Lotus, Red Lotus appreciation weeks, rated T for Ming-Hua being a pottymouth, wiry little bundle of snark and mayhem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-23 16:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4884430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhazadeWaterbender/pseuds/RhazadeWaterbender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven interludes in the life of a certain tiny angry waterbender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1:  Childhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We begin with this: baby!Ming discovering that she's a waterbender.

It started with a hairstick that fell between the floorboards, where reaching little toes couldn’t grasp.  And a seven-year-old girl, only just becoming aware that she’s seen as a _disappointment_ , knowing that the loss of the hairstick will only compound that.

She’s not sure _what_ it was that she did—some frustrated jerk of her head, perhaps—that caused the water, trailing its straw, to bounce out of the cup at her bedside.  One way or another, the hairstick was readily retrieved.

At first, they don’t believe her.  When she duplicates the feat, it feels like a victory...until their expressions turn to smug concern, their voices to cloying pity.

It’s no use.  She wonders if this newly-discovered talent just makes her even _more_ of a _disappointment_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She always struck me as something of a shadow archetype of Toph...except that I doubt the cage was gilded, and I doubt she escaped it at quite so early of an age.


	2. Day 2:  Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ming-Hua's initial impressions of the other three. Implied Mingzan if you squint. Contains a precision F-strike.

Her initial impression of the boy with the split left eyebrow is that he’s bookish and weird.  He’s certainly the talker of the group; and when it’s not about politics—none of that complimentary—it’s about poetry.  But she has to admit: the current order of things is so fucked as to make the whole anarchy thing sound like a serious improvement.

And there’s also the fact that with nothing to fall back on but his own strength and skill, he’s nonetheless a formidable combatant.

The other girl is quiet, simultaneously aloof and nervy; she gives an impression of perpetual vigilance.  She’s also distinctive; aside from her sheer _height_ , the healer has never seen her without a hat pulled down almost to her eyebrows.  Idly, she wonders if the firebender is hiding something.

It’s not until later that she learns that the sniper _is_ hiding a garish tattoo, a horrifying past, and a huge crush on the split-eyebrowed youth.

She warms up to the sandbender the quickest.  He’s the youngest of the group—younger even than herself—and the most approachable; she speculates, at first, as to _what_ , exactly, led him to throw in with the others.

That’s before he reveals a talent as rare as the sniper’s.  Although that almost unequivocally answers her question, she asks anyway, out of courtesy.  The answer is more-or-less what she’d guessed:  Like herself, he can’t go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah; I always tended to figure Ming-Hua for the youngest of the Red Lotus inner circle. But someone suggested Ghazan as the youngest and that was somehow adorable (and, what with him being a shadow archetype of Bolin and all, makes _sense_ ).


	3. Day 3:  Disability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another kid!Ming piece. It ended up mainly being about ableism, to be quite honest.

Even before her talent manifests itself, she’s somewhat learned to compensate—with her sharp little teeth or her nimble little toes, or sometimes by pinning an item between delicate jaw and narrow shoulder—for what she was never granted at birth.

Even after she’s learned what she can do, the pitying expressions of others grate at her.  Worse yet are the whispers:  _Poor little thing.  All of the forms require_ arm _gestures, you know. Such a shame about her..._ affliction _;_ _she’d certainly have the raw power to make something great of herself otherwise._

She wonders if they’d have spoken similarly of the blind mistress of metal.

At least she’s allowed to bathe alone—and thus, practice in secret, as she’s discouraged from anything that might _give her false hope_ or _disconcert people_ —now.  There’s some comfort in wrapping herself in a rippling shawl of water.

One day when she’s eleven, the bathwater glows, soothing a scraped knee.  For the first time in three years, she broaches the topic of lessons.

Her appearance, she’s informed, would... _not inspire confidence_.

Even as she teaches herself to shape her water cloak—with little more than tiny shifts of her shoulder muscles—into suspended rills that wave beside her like tentacles, she’s quickly learning frustrated rage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I continue to maintain that Ming-Hua had a specialized technique aside from water-whip prostheses, and that said specialty was healing. And yes, I outright _lampshaded_ her being a shadow archetype of Toph this time.


	4. Chapter 4:  Relationships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was tempted to write Mingzan; instead, this ended up mostly being dangerous ladies who are too cool for one uppercase being galpals. And it actually ties into a couple of other Red Lotus drabbles that I've written.

Only two opponents—perhaps the turncoat’s twins grown to near-maturity—in her way.  They offer a slight challenge, but it’s still just a matter of moments before they’re outmaneuvered and incapacitated.

_The crevasse should be right about...here!_

She’s through the ice, her drill reformed into her two customary water whips, and falling.  The support beams are almost _fun_.  And the sentries are no challenge whatsoever.

She can see a rag-swathed form huddled in the corner of the cell.  The sniper, shivering, a metal plate chained across her forehead.  She suspects that some skulls, courtesy of the strategist, are going to get busted for that later...if the sniper, that is, doesn’t see to the skull-busting herself.

The door is off of its hinges, and the ugly headband is off of the sniper.  And  the healer is suddenly being aggressively hugged— slightly awkward; while the tall woman could certainly  _use_ a bath, getting wet would do her absolutely no good in this cold— as  her friend self-recriminates over,  as she puts it,  _allowing_ _herself_ _to_ take a boomerang to the forehead thirteen years ago.

“It’s good to see you, too, ‘Li,” the healer says sardonically, “but I’d venture to guess that you _really_ don’t want to get soaked right now.”

Later, as they’re escaping—and the tattooed sandbender grumbles at the sniper and the strategist for getting cozy, the strategist pointedly ignores him, and the sniper fires back a retort about the cold—the healer is reminded, once again, of just how much she’s  _missed_ the three of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this is probably the first time I've gone live with even an _abbreviation_ of a canon character's name. I have absolutely no idea _why_ I'm evasive about canon-character names in my prose proper...but thanks to that, I keep referencing Ghazan _totally_ being a sandbender (because he _totally was_ , and I can back this up) on account of not quite being able to suss out his exact "role."


	5. Day 5:  Waterbending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because Ming-Hua was pretty much entirely self-taught and waterbent with her spine, and you will not convince me otherwise.

In her childhood, it had been her solace as well as her adaptation. Now, she has the opportunity to perfect it.

She’s quite the accomplished healer now.  Besides that, with little besides the finest motions of her torso, she can form rippling tentacles of current with the strength to lift light objects and the finesse to keep them relatively dry.  For anything heavier, she has to freeze her whips...which is a bit uncomfortable.

Eventually, she succeeds at freezing only the tip, while keeping the whip blood-warm at her shoulder.  By then, she can also manage sufficient surface tension to lift her own weight.

What she’ll take _pride_ in, she thinks, is being able to simultaneously lift herself _and_ one of her three friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was actually a bit difficult, as it'd kind of been a secondary theme for three of the four previous chapters. So I did a bit of playing with the precise mechanics of her ice grapples, and foreshadowed a bit.


	6. Day 6:  Prison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost went with AU, because I _knew_ this was going to hurt no matter _how_ I handled it.  Ming-Hua Precision F-Strike Count is now at 2.

She wakes to stifling heat.  The hardwood floor underneath her sways alarmingly.

_What?_

She’s in some sort of cell—a cage, really.  It’s suspended by chains above...all that she can see from her current position is a sullen glow.

Her customary water cloak is missing, she’s still a bit too dazed to stand up—the bastards must have sedated her—and something tells her that leaning directly against the bars would _not_ be a smart idea.  But she manages to push herself up to a kneeling position.

Below her is a precipitous drop into the seething crater of a dormant volcano.

Her first thought, incongruously, is where a certain sandbender is when his particular talent would come in handy.

Her second is: _and they accuse_ me _of having a vicious streak_.  What sort of fucked-up imagination would even _design_ something like this?

Breaking out of _this_ one is going to be genuinely _difficult_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and yes, I decided to be particularly evil and have her think that she can escape at the end.


	7. Day 7:  Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Mostly, I just made up stories about the guards..."

She’s entirely aware that her guards are unnerved by her.  More than once, she overhears a muttered remark about how she’s probably imagining all of the horrible things she’d like to do to them.

 _Let_ them think that.  Perhaps it somehow comforts them to believe that she’s plotting their doom.

Not that, on some level, she _isn’t_ thinking about them.  She observes, as there’s little else for her to do; and, every so often, a snippet of conversation drifts through her awareness:  She’s heard that big-nosed sentry, for one, hold forth about mooncakes the way the strategist always used to about that poet.

_In the wrong line of work, are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who says Ming-Hua had no antivillain cred can _fight me_.


End file.
